Consultant may review boatyard plan

Elizabeth Kim

Published 10:33 pm, Tuesday, September 11, 2012

STAMFORD -- As city officials begin considering a plan to make way for a hedge fund headquarters along Stamford's waterfront, the Pavia administration has decided to hire a consultant to help land-use officials assess a proposal to relocate a popular South End boatyard.

Norman Cole, the land-use bureau chief, told Zoning Board members Monday night he was reaching out to potential consultants who could assess the feasibility of building a boatyard on a 3.5-acre site at 205 Magee Ave.

After the meeting, Cole said the decision to seek an independent, third-party opinion came out of discussions he had with other administration officials. He said he expected the search could take several weeks.

In a meeting two weeks ago with Mayor Michael Pavia and city officials, Harbor Point developer Building and Land Technology proposed the Magee Avenue property, which sits along the east branch of Stamford Harbor, as an alternative to the boatyard that had been located on a 14-acre parcel near Bateman Way.

The plan comes in the wake of news last month that the state brokered a secret deal to bring Bridgewater Associates, a hedge fund now based in Westport, to Stamford in exchange for a package of incentives worth as much as $115 million.

If the city approves the redevelopment plan, Bridgewater would invest $750 million in constructing its new headquarters at the former boatyard site.

The company, which has 1,225 employees, has also agreed to add 1,000 high-level jobs to its payroll.

Monday's meeting represented the first time the Zoning Board discussed the boatyard issue since the Bridgewater announcement.

Following demolition of the boatyard beginning last December, board members had spent months pressuring BLT to disclose its plans for the waterfront site. Stamford zoning and state coastal regulations require the peninsula be reserved for a water-dependent use.

In July, after the developer failed to provide its plans as promised, the board called for a cease-and-desist order.

A plan to relocate the boatyard would require needed approvals from several city boards as well the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Among the complexities of the Magee Avenue relocation proposal is that BLT does not own land along the waterfront, meaning that the city would need to grant either an easement or sell the property to the developer.

BLT has yet to submit official land use applications, but Cole suggested the city nonetheless needed to prepare itself by hiring an expert to weigh in.

"This is an extremely complicated series of decisions," Cole told Zoning Board members. "We're taking the first couple of logical steps now."

Boaters, who have long prized the location and scope of services offered at the former South End boatyard, have already criticized the relocation plan. Among the reasons is the significantly smaller size of the parcel and the busy channel on which it sits.

"You cannot get a sufficient amount of boats in the channel with tugboats pushing barges up," said Maureen Boylan, an organizer of the group Save Our Boatyard.

She added the water along the channel was too shallow.

"There won't be enough depth in the water for boats with large rudders to get through," she argued.

There is also the more immediate obstacle of the city's cease-and-desist order, which forbids the developer from doing any work on the former boatyard site.

Earlier this year, BLT unsuccessfully tried to urge zoning officials to allow the company to begin an environmental remediation of the former industrial property. One of the contributing factors now appears to be the construction timeline for Bridgewater, which is looking to move into its new offices beginning in 2016.

Last month, BLT filed an appeal of the order with the Zoning Board of Appeals. A public hearing is scheduled for Oct. 10.

On Monday, Zoning Board members expressed anger at BLT's actions over the past nine months, during which time the city was left in the dark about the developer's intention to bring in Bridgewater.

"We had no indication of what was going on behind the scenes," said Audrey Cosentini, a board member, during Monday's meeting. "Now we are being asked to alter our modus operandi."

In January, board members asked BLT to provide regular updates on its plans involving the former boatyard site. At the time, BLT consistently maintained it had no redevelopment plans in place for the property.

But it did agree to set up an interim boatyard, as well as submit a comprehensive plan to the city by the end of June.

Sometime in June, BLT abruptly ceased its communication with the board. The promised redevelopment plan was never submitted.

In an apparent overture to the Zoning Board, John Freeman, an attorney for BLT, recently said the company was not permitted to reveal its plans because of ongoing negotiations between Bridgewater and the state. "We wanted to let this process work itself through before we made any announcements," he said. "I hope now that since all of this is out in the open the Zoning Board will understand why we weren't able to give them more information sooner."

Board members, however, did not appear to be sympathetic this week.

Cosentini suggested the board refuse any applications from BLT, a retaliation strategy that had been offered up by corporation counsel following the city's decision to issue the cease-and-desist order.

"Maybe we should play their game," she said to her fellow board members.

However, Tom Mills, the board's chairman, rejected the idea. At the very least, he said, the board needed to consider BLT's proposal.

"Are we all not striving toward the same thing? That the city has a working boatyard?" he said.